Disappearing act
by HirokoArita
Summary: Charlotte Williams is an Elf in a human's world. She was never supposed to fall for him but love has a funny way of showing up in unexpected places. Can she tell him how she feels before she fades away? Or is he too preoccupied with someone else?
1. Prologue

Prologue

I stepped through the barrier to platform nine and three quarters, inhaling the familiar scent of the last five minutes before the Hogwarts express left. I'd always found human capacity for stress astounding. They had very little – one overdue assignment or gas bill and they were off.

"Charlie!"

I smiled to myself and turned to face one of the worst offenders. Rachel Macallister was a short, blond witch with a huge personality and a boyfriend to die for who, predictably, was standing just behind her smiling his slow smile. I waved and wheeled my heavy trolley over to the two of them.

"Come on Lottie, hurry up, the train leaves in five minutes and Oliver isn't even here yet." She wrung her hands together as she urged me forward.

Peter and I shared a wry look. She was always like this just before the train left. I had a feeling Oliver was late every year on purpose.

"Calm down Rachel." I soothed, whistling a note and levitating my trunk into the outstretched hands of the surprised baggage handler. "He'll be here."

"I know, but I can't help but wonder if this is the year he misses it you know?" She mused as she swung herself onto the train.

Peter rolled his eyes at me and grinned.

"I have it on good authority he's waiting just outside." He said dryly before following his fussing girlfriend.

I grinned to myself and decided to wait for him. Rachel and Peter would find an empty compartment and at least Oliver would know the general location of our seat without having to walk through the entire length of the train.

I sighed as I realised this would be the last time I would ever do this. It was my seventh and final year; I was of age and in a little under a year I would be firmly ensconced in a wizarding University medicine program. Of course, when I had expressed interest, the university had snapped me up immediately. Elfin healers were hard to come by and I was guaranteed a job after the four years of training. It was the music that made us so special. We had an affinity with the way things worked so to speak and, with just a well tuned and simple song, could heal practically every malady anybody had ever thought of.

"Hey Charlie." A voice said jovially at my elbow with a thick Scottish brogue.

I grinned and turned around to face my best friend… at least that was the original plan. I ended up looking at a rather… muscly chest which was most definitely not attached to the weedy little boy I had said goodbye to at the beginning of the summer. I tilted my head back and stared at his face. It was Oliver… and yet it wasn't… I narrowed my eyes.

"Alright, who are you and what have you done with my best friend?" I demanded.

Oliver merely grinned before lifting his heavy trunk as though it were a feather and handing it to the baggage handler.

"You know, if you take that determination to get into Puddlemere any further, you're going to explode." I commented.

Oliver laughed.

"You're as bad as my mother did you know that?"

"I happen to get along very well with your Mum." I said indignantly.

"Well as long as you don't go around sprouting comments to your significantly wealthy and giggly friends about how I'm a 'late developer' I'll be happy and pretend I didn't hear you give her a compliment."

"Giggly?" I asked, raising a slanted eyebrow.

"Trust me, women over forty should not giggle."

"I think I'll take that a step further and declare that any woman of any age should never giggle." I agreed, sighing as we walked past a group of fourth years doing exactly that at the sight of the handsome boy wandering obliviously past in the narrow corridor.

Wait… handsome?

We found Rachel and Peter and stopped outside the compartment with a grimace as the sounds of definitely feminine giggling reached our ears.

"Should we even go there?" I asked him, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.

"Let's not."

I grinned and opened the door, trying to hide my smile as Rachel and Peter sprung apart with slightly sheepish expressions.

"Break it up kids." I told them, moving to put my duffel bag on one of the luggage shelves above our heads.

Rachel made a face at me.

"If it wasn't for the whole immortality thing I'd call you immature."

I sighed, barely concealing a grimace. It was funny how humans managed to construe that immortality was a good thing. I unconsciously fingered the diamond-shaped jewel hanging from my neck and frowned. I was only seventeen and was still considered an infant by my people's standard. My father himself was at least nine hundred years old while my mother was almost six hundred. While we didn't live forever, it seemed like it. The oldest any Elf had lived to was just under a millennium. Most elves secluded themselves from the human world for that very reason. Not many humans understood the difficulties of our age expectations. To us, human life seemed to go by in a heartbeat and there have been too many tragic human-elfin love stories around to encourage the practise.

There was, however, one major plus in the whole affair. Over one hundred years ago, my family had developed a complex piece of enchantment to allow one of their daughters, a girl named Laura, to leave the immortal lines and join her human true love for a brief stay in the rollercoaster of life. The secret lay in the jewel I, and every Elf from my family, wore around my neck. If I ever found a human I would never want to part from I would just have to give him that necklace, my star, and I would become mortal and live only slightly longer than the average human.

I never really understood why anybody would want to live for that short a time but as I grew older, and grew closer to my friends, I began to sort of see what persuaded Laura to die so early. I didn't want to lose any of my friends and yet I knew I would have to watch them grow old and die. It wasn't a prospect I was particularly looking forward to and so I tended to spend as much time as I possibly could with them and found myself very quick to apologise to any of them if we so much as fought for a second.

"Earth the Charlotte… come back from Elf land…"

I jumped a little and looked up at Oliver's smiling face.

"Sorry, just thinking." I told them, smiling reassuringly.

"You've been doing a lot of that lately," Rachel noticed with a frown, "are you ok?"

I shrugged and whistled absently for my morning tea.

"I'm fine." I said, unwrapping the green leaves from the packet of never-ending elfin chocolate my parents had given me before I left, and taking a bite.

"If that's what I think it is, give some here." Oliver said, his eyes lighting up.

Elfin chocolate was renowned throughout the wizarding world as being _the _best, and people were always pestering us for the recipe. Honeydukes had once offered my mother a very large sum of money to supply the sweets to their shop, but like every other Elf before her, she had politely declined.

I rolled my eyes at my friend and broke off a small square for everyone in the compartment.

"You could have at least said please." I admonished, the corners of my mouth twitching.

Oliver shrugged around his chocolate and mumbled something about it not being as much fun.

The final whistle blew and I smiled as parents began running alongside the train, calling out to their children to be good and mind the Bloody Baron. My parents had only ever come to the station once in my seven years of schooling and that had only been to show me where to go. They were amazingly busy people; my father worked for the ministry as the head of the Department for Magical creatures and my mother was head of the Elfin contingent at St Mungos. I didn't mind much at all as I knew they both loved me very much, having waited for me for most of their lives. They made as much time as they could for me and we had our disagreements yes, but all in all I did love them.

I had always found it interesting that they had chosen to send me to Hogwarts instead of the Elfin school somewhere in Northern France. I was the first full-blooded Elf to set foot in the human school in at least fifty years and many of the elders in our community relied on me to inform them of the latest news in the human world. I guessed the main reason I attended the school was because of my gift with healing that I had inherited from my mother and my parents were doing everything they could to cultivate it and prepare me for constant association with humans which I would not pick up from the Elfin school. It was kind of disappointing that the only Elves I knew were about fifty years older than I was but I had learned to deal with it, reminding myself that in Elfin terms, fifty years wasn't really all that much time.

"Where are you going Oliver?"

I was jolted out of my reverie by Peter's question and I realised Oliver was standing at the door of the compartment.

"Quidditch." Rachel and I said in unison just before he opened his mouth.

Oliver glared at the both of us as we collapsed into laughter at his predictability before stalking huffily out of the compartment.

To say Oliver was Quidditch obsessed would be the biggest understatement of the year, but contrary to popular belief, he didn't live and breathe the game. He'd found out in fifth year when he'd become captain that any Quidditch-related conversation in the presence of Rachel and I would result in him having to duck low-flying objects and having to endure the cold shoulder for a month. He generally kept his Captainly speeches for the Quidditch pitch and only ever showed just how obsessed he really was before a game when he tended to collapse in a pile of nerves – not unlike myself just before a performance.

If Oliver was Quidditch obsessed, I was a music nerd. All Elves were really. Our entire form of magic revolved around magic and the lot of us had perfect pitch. I was constantly fawned over by Hogwarts' music professor and had, for some reason, agreed to take music extension as a NEWT subject. Amongst humans, I was considered somewhat of a musical prodigy, playing practically every single instrument imaginable without really having had extensive lessons, and being able to compose complex pieces of music in about an hour. Amongst Elves, I was considered merely talented which was most likely a good thing as in my first year, my head had swelled to about twice its usual size until I went home and talked to my cousin who had merely raised an eyebrow and proceeded to shoot down all of my convincing arguments on the development of human music while he was playing the sitar… but then Lawrence was always a bit mental.

I turned from staring out the window to look over at Peter and Rachel. They were asleep, Rachel with her head on Peter's shoulder and snoring slightly. I smiled fondly and whistled softly for my book, opening to a dog-eared page and beginning to read. It would be a long time until Oliver got back.

I awoke to a deep chill on the air. I sat up and absently caught my book as it slipped off my chest. I looked out at the window and frowned. It was dark and there were frost patterns creeping over the glass.

I glanced around the compartment and kicked Oliver's shin gently. He opened his brown eyes groggily and shook his head a little to clear it. I watched as he took in the strangeness of the surroundings.

"What's going on?" He asked, moving opposite me to peer out the window. "We're not moving." He noticed, looking up with a jolt as the lights flickered.

"I know." I agreed. "Something's not right."

He stood with a frown and moved over to the door, sliding it open and peering out into the corridor. The door slammed shut of its own accord and he was thrown back into his seat.

"What the?" He murmured standing and attempting to open the jammed door. "It's locked!" he exclaimed incredulously.

"What?" I asked incredulously, jumping up to test it myself.

Somehow the compartment door had locked itself.

"Something is definitely not right." I said, sliding back into my seat.

"Where are Peter and Rachel?" He asked me, turning to peer out the window again, watching the frost patterns with increasing worry.

"I don't know, I only just woke up." I said, suddenly realising they weren't there. "They probably just went to grab something from the lunch lady." I reasoned.

We sat in silence for a few seconds staring out the window in an attempt to see what was going on.

"There's something moving out there!" I exclaimed, jumping back from the window as a dark shape floated past.

"What on earth is going on?" Oliver exclaimed as the lights flickered once more then died completely.

I shivered and rubbed my hands together to try and get some life back into my long fingers.

"I have no idea, but we can't really do anything about it at the moment can we?" I reasoned, calming him down a little.

We both jumped as the door to the compartment clicked audibly and began to slide open seemingly on its own. I stared out past the door and gasped, shrinking back into my seat to get away from the thing at the opening. The dementor poked its head around the door frame and scoped the place out, its unseen eyes coming to rest on Oliver for a second. He seemed to shiver violently and close his eyes, shaking his head from side to side as though he was seeing something I couldn't.

I closed my eyes as I heard a soft tune float in on the air of the cabin. The song grew in intensity and I realised with a jolt that it was me that was singing. I had no idea where the music was coming from and I'd never heard the song before in my life but I suddenly knew what I was doing and poured all of my happiness and contentment into the song and tried very hard not to waver when the dementor wheeled around to face me. This had happened before – all Elves experienced their magic taking over at least once in their lives so I wasn't particularly startled. A soft glow began to grow around me and spread out through the cabin. The dementor screamed and beat a hasty retreat out through the door. I stood, still singing and slammed it shut with a bang.

The song stopped but I liked it so much I walked back to my seat humming the tune softly, my fingers itching for some of my trusty manuscript. Oliver wordlessly reached up for my bag, pulled out my music book and handed it to me, a cryptic expression on his face.

"You ok?" I asked him, pausing with my pencil poised on top of the pad.

Oliver looked at me for a second then sighed.

"Yes, fine."

I frowned at him for a second but let it go, turning back to my manuscript and scribbling out the tune, humming all the while.


	2. OLIVER DARLING!

_Heh... so i forgot to put a little authors note at the beginning of the last one... sorry guys, this is my first story after all..._

_so..._

_Disclaimer: I own everything but Oliver Wood and Hogwarts and any other characters that appear in Harry Potter... Charlie's mine!_

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* * *

__Five months later_

I stood once again in front of the Hogwarts express, waiting patiently next to a not-so-patient Oliver.

"Where the hell are they?" He muttered darkly, checking his watch for the thousandth time in ten minutes.

I rolled my eyes at him and smiled in spite of myself.

"You did tell them six o'clock didn't you?"

Oliver glanced at me sideways.

"I'm pretty sure I did, yes."

I laughed at him.

"Look at the clock." I told him when he looked at me as though I was an alien.

Oliver turned and glanced at the clock then sighed.

"Why didn't you tell me my watch was half an hour fast?" he accused, taping it with his wand.

"Because it's so much more fun to watch you suffer." I thought for a second. "And laugh when you're at class half an hour early." I added dryly, picking up one side of my trunk and wheeling it away towards the barrier.

"You're infuriating sometimes did you know that?" Oliver said, jogging after me.

I smiled at him over my shoulder.

"You know you love me."

It was meant as an innocent 'friend' sort of comment but I could have sworn he stumbled a little as I said it.

"What?" He exclaimed.

"Relax Oliver, it was a joke." I told him, the corners of my mouth twitching upwards.

"Oh right…" He said sounding bemused.

I grinned to myself and walked nonchalantly through the barrier and into muggle Kings Cross to wait for Mr and Mrs Wood.

When Oliver had asked me to spend my last Hogwarts Christmas with him at the Wood mansion I had readily accepted. Mrs Wood was famous for her huge family reunion type Christmas dinners and I had a feeling Oliver didn't want to go and endure the 'my how you've grown' sort of comments from fussy Aunts alone. I didn't mind as I would probably walk over hot coals for a slice of Diane Wood's Christmas pudding.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the familiar packet of never-ending elfin Chocolate and handed a square to Oliver who immediately forgot the previous misdemeanour and chewed down happily on the sweet. It was amazing how chocolate solved everything.

He almost choked when a shrill voice rang out behind us on the platform.

"OLIVER DARLING!"

I coughed hurriedly to smother my laugh and absently patted my friend on the back as Mr and Mrs Wood came bustling up to the both of us. It was easy to see which side of the family Oliver took after as his father rolled his eyes in my direction and moved to shake my hand in greeting.

"Come to keep us all sane have you Charlie?" He asked, flinching as his wife swiped him playfully across his shoulder blades.

I grinned.

"That's the plan."

"Hello Charlotte dear…child."

I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling at the audible pause. Mrs Wood had never really known what to do with me. I had actually caught her husband shaking his head at her when she'd almost dipped in a curtsey as though I were royalty.

I gave her a hug and offered them both some chocolate.

"I've got some more in my bag from Mum, for hot chocolate." I told them.

Beside me Oliver nearly fainted.

"You didn't tell me that." He accused.

"That's because you would have nicked it while I was asleep."

Oliver smiled sheepishly.

"Can you blame me?" He said, reaching out for another piece of the precious sweet.

I rolled my eyes and handed him the rest. Really, what was the attraction of a few pieces of chocolate to humans?

Mr Wood took my trunk from me (ignoring my protests) and we wandered through the crowd towards the ministry cars waiting for us at the front of the station.

* * *

So... that's the second chapter down. I'll try and update soon but in the mean time, REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW! Please... :)


	3. Pianos and Snowballs

Ok so this chapter is a little longer... sorry if it's a bit unreadable... I have a cold :)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from Charlie... oh and Rachel and Peter (heh, forgot about them) Everything else belongs to JK!

* * *

I awoke the next morning and paused for a few seconds before I realised where I was. I smiled to myself and turned to gaze out of the window at the white powder gently falling past the glass and gathering on the sill. I had always loved snow. I just loved the cold really and could often be found sitting on a window seat somewhere wrapped in a doona with a cup of hot chocolate.

Speaking of…

I poked my head out of my plethora of blankets and sized up the distance from my bed to where my dressing gown and ugg boots lay in a crumpled heap near the door. I took a deep breath and threw back the covers, leaping over to my extra clothing and throwing it on before I could feel the sudden chill. The thing I loved about the cold was the fact that I could rug up and feel toasty warm without the added humidity and sweatiness you got with summer not feeling like my fingers were about to freeze off.

There was a knock on the door and it opened abruptly. I jumped in fright and spun around to face the culprit.

"Oliver!" I admonished as he poked his head around the door frame and grinned sheepishly.

"Morning sunshine." He greeted me wryly.

I glared at him, turned to my dresser and began a feeble attempt to drag a brush through my thick red-gold hair.

"Mum just sent me up to let you know she's got a pot of her hot chocolate going if you're interested." He threw me a lopsided grin. "It _is _eleven O'clock you know."

My eyes widened a little but I shrugged thinking it was the holidays and so what if I caught up on a little bit of sleep. But Mrs Wood's hot chocolate, now that sounded like something to wake up to.

I drew my hair up behind my head in a messy bun and turned to my friend, returning the grin.

"I would never say no to hot chocolate, you know that as well as the next person."

"Hmm…. Probably better, I have known you for seven years Charlie."

"I won't hold that against you." I told him as we reached the top of the stairs.

"Thankyou."

"You're welcome."

We wandered into the kitchen and I nearly fainted at the heady cinnamon and chocolate scents coming from the pot on the stove. Mrs Wood stood over the pot, stirring it occasionally with her wand. She looked up at the both of us as we entered and smiled.

"Good morning Charlotte. Sleep well?"

The corners of my mouth twitched at the standard motherly question as I took a seat at the table, reaching for the morning paper.

"Yes thankyou, although someone could have woken me up you know."

"Nonsense!" She reproved, handing Oliver two plates with toast and jam. "Oliver only just showed his face as well. You must have needed the sleep."

As if on cue, Oliver yawned into the jam, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. I smiled at him fondly suddenly thinking he looked rather cute when he was sleepy.

I shook my head to clear it. Where on earth had that come from?

"Charlie?"

My head snapped up at Oliver's question, only to feel myself blush. His knife was poised over the jam pot and he was looking at me with concern.

"Are you alright?"

"Hmm? Oh yes fine." I said with a wave of my hand, hurriedly bringing the paper up to cover my reddening face.

What on earth was going on? I had been acting like this for a while now. Catching myself thinking thoughts I really shouldn't be thinking – I was beginning to scare myself. Oliver and I were best friends, nothing more, nothing less.

"Here you go dear."

I looked up as Mrs Wood placed a steaming hot mug of chocolate in front of me and eyes lit up, all disturbing thoughts gone.

"Oh by the way Charlotte, Phillip and I uncovered another room the other day." She winked at me over the entertainment section of the newspaper. "I think you'd be interested in taking a look later on – see if you can do something to fix it up for us will you?"

I nodded, smiling in curiosity. The Wood family had owned the huge mansion in the Scottish countryside for generations and recently, Mr and Mrs Wood had embarked on a renovation vendetta, uncovering countless numbers of bricked up rooms in the process. Some were filled with long lost family heirlooms; others had been bricked up for a very good reason and still more were empty and filled to the brim with dust. I was more than a little intrigued to find out why Mrs Wood was smiling at me so knowingly and Oliver was fighting to hide his grin.

I finished my hot chocolate and retreated back up the stairs to my room, showering and changing into my everyday clothes before heading back downstairs.

"Right, so where is this room?" I asked, cornering Mrs Wood in the kitchen.

After two wrong turns and nearly missing a nasty fall through the floorboards, I found myself in front of the third door on the right on the fourth floor. I frowned at the chipped paint on the surface and pushed on the wood, wincing slightly as the door creaked open.

My mouth fell to the floor.

There, covered in dust and the grime of the ages, stood a grand piano. It looked to be at least one hundred years old, maybe more and my practised eye could pick out under the dust that it had hardly ever been played.

I crossed the floor, my feet shuffling across the floorboards and kicking up the dust, towards the piano. I whistled a note and watched in satisfaction as the dust gathered together into one big ball in the centre of the room. I crossed to the window and wrestled it open before guiding the dust ball out into the crisp air. I turned back to the piano again and lifted up the lid to make sure all the strings were in place. There were only a few broken (it surprised me that no one had heard them break before) so I fixed them quickly before moving to check the tuning.

I winced as I played a simple chord and sighed. So this was what Mrs Wood had meant by fixing things. She had wanted me to tune the instrument. There was no denying it was beautiful, most old pianos were, if a little notorious for going out of tune quickly, but fortunately I knew a little spell my mother had taught me that fixed that in a little under ten minutes.

I cast the spell then turned to regard the rest of the room. It was bare except for a small desk with three draws in the corner. I opened the first one and coughed as a cloud of dust sprayed into my face. I sighed and got rid of it the same way as before, turning back to the papers crammed haphazardly into the desk. I pulled the first one out and nearly died with excitement. These were old original Chopin manuscripts – first edition and in his handwriting. I'd only ever seen copies. I reached back into the draws and pulled out Vivaldi, Mozart, Grieg, Bach and some composers I'd never even heard of. It was an amazing library of piano, violin, clarinet and flute scores that the world had never even seen before. I was like a kid in a candy store and didn't even notice the piano playing a finishing chord to signify the end of the spell.

About two hours later, I looked up from sorting out the manuscripts and realised suddenly that I'd forgotten about the piano. I stood up and moved to sit down on the piano stool, fingering the keys. I began to play the opening of my favourite Chopin piece and couldn't stop grinning through the entire score. The instrument was perfect! If I could have, I would've shrunk it a put it in my pocket to smuggle it out!

I jumped about ten feet into the air as something cold and wet smacked into the side of my head. Oliver was standing at the door to the music room, holding a charmed snowball in his hand, trying and failing miserably for an 'it wasn't me' look.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"You are so dead."

I whistled softly and the snowball flew out of his outstretched hand and into mine. Oliver wisely took this as his cue to run and I chased him down the stairs and out of the house, casting a quick warming charm around myself before running out of the door.

This sort of thing happened every year. Oliver and I would always end up pelting each other with snowballs and having an all out snow war. It was never clear who won, suffice it to say we always came back soaking wet and laughing so it wasn't all bad. Usually Rachel joined in, her snowballs were always the best, but this year she'd decided to spend Christmas with Peter and his family so fortunately for Oliver and I, we were spared her wicked aim.

I hurled a snowball at Oliver's back, hitting him square in the back of the head. Oliver turned and glared at me.

"The whole point of a snowball fight is to throw snowballs Oliver." I yelled back at him over my shoulder as he chased after me around the frozen pond.

I screeched as he grabbed me around the waist and was probably about to launch into a serious tickle fight but he overbalanced and we fell to the ground.

"Are you sure?" he asked a little breathlessly, "This is so much more fun." He said, poking me in the side.

"Argh! That's not fair!" I yelled, squirming.

Elves were extremely ticklish on their sides, a fact that my so called best friend had discovered during our first snowball fight in first year. Damn him.

I somehow managed to flip over so I was half on top of him, preparing to tickle him back when I stopped; startled, realising our faces were_ very _close.

Nothing happened for a while, the both of us just staring at each other. We jumped as Mrs Wood's voice rang out over the pond.

"OLIVER! CHARLIE! LUNCH TIME!"

I rolled off my friend and sat up, a confused expression on my face. What had just happened? Damn, Oliver was my best friend, I shouldn't be… I couldn't… I mean, he was a human for goodness sake, nothing _could_ happen.

I as jolted out of my reverie as something cold and wet was shoved down the back of my shirt and Oliver ran off laughing around the pond towards the house.

"ARGH! OLIVER!" I screamed after him, jumping to my feet and following him back to the mansion.

Two could play at the 'let's pretend nothing happened' game.


End file.
